Over 300 institutional investors have unified cause to file Germany's Volkswagen Group a multi-billion dollar lawsuit for failing to comply to its stock market duty in an emissions cheating scandal.
Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft, or Volkswagen AG, was charged by its 278 investors from all over the world for damages accounting to €3.3bn ($3.6bn). The civil complaint was filed at a regional court in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, the home state of Volkswagen. The investors demanding equitable remedy were joined by German insurers and Calpers, a U.S. pension funding association, as reported in The Guardian.
Law firm TISAB said the lawsuit was over whether the car company neglected its duty to the capital markets regarding the timeframe between June 2008 and Sept. 18, 2015, The Globe and Mail reported. Investors have accused Volkswagen for not making public releases regarding the emissions scandal.
Volkswagen has already been previously caught in 2015 to be using "default device" software to systematically cheat on U.S. regulators' emissions tests.
Moreover, Volkswagen has recently published an account that has pushed its violation further against U.S. emissions law - an account that was publicly announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Global Chief Executive Officer of Volkswagen, Martin Winterkorn, had already resigned in September 2015, right after the public break of the emissions scandal. Volkswagen was left with large fines amounting to $20bn. They are also undergoing a criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to The Guardian's report.
Atty. Andreas Tilp had filed the lawsuit on behalf of the retail investors last October, 2015. He stated "Volkswagen AG persistently denies any settlement negotiations and also refuses to waive the statute of limitation defense until now, it was necessary to file this first multi-billion euro lawsuit," in a Reuters publication.
As of now, none from Volkswagen gave a comment since they are already in the suit.
On top of the emissions scandal, the car maker is also currently invovled in a motion filed by the law firm for a allegedly violating model claims, a German legal procedure which - for lack of U.S. style classaction lawsuits - uses court rulings won by individual investors as templates to set damages for others that are equally affected.
Furthermore, Volkswagen also announced in The Globe and Mail report, that Michael Horn, who has been the president and chief executive officer of Volkswagen of America since 2014, is leaving by mutual agreement, effective immediately in order to pursue other opportunities.
Horn has admitted that his company had been dishonest and some individuals made wrong decisions. But he, the supervisory board, and other top leaders, denied the intentional ordering of the cheating.
The former VW president has been unavailable for comment after that.
